Interstate 65 in Kentucky

Kentucky Turnpike shield

From July 25, 1954 until June 30, 1975, the portion of I-65 from I-264 in Louisville to the WK Parkway in Elizabethtown was a toll road bearing the Kentucky Turnpike name. It was signed with a distinctive sign featuring a cardinal, the state bird of Kentucky. Unlike most states, Kentucky law requires that tolls be removed when the original construction bonds are paid off. The road was thus the first of the state's extensive system of toll roads to be made free.[4] Unlike the other roads, which maintain their separate names when becoming toll-free, the Kentucky Turnpike signs were removed. It is today almost impossible to find any traces of its former toll status.

The table below shows the original locations of the toll plazas, and toll charges for consumer-sized, or class 1 vehicles.

In addition to toll plazas, the Kentucky Turnpike also provided two service areas just south of Lebanon Junction and just north of Shepherdsville. They each provided a gas station and at least one fast food restaurant.[6] They both closed when the turnpike was absorbed into the Interstate 65 corridor in June 1975, thus making the service area on the Wendell H. Ford Western Kentucky Parkway (a.k.a. the “WK Parkway”) the last remaining service areas on the toll road system, and still remained open even after the WK Parkway became toll-free in 1987, which is 27 years after the Kentucky Turnpike did so.

On November 15, 2006, the stretch of I-65 from Bowling Green to Louisville was renamed the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Highway.[7]

On February 12, 2007, a bill passed the Kentucky Senate to rename I-65 in Jefferson County the "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway".[8] Signage was posted July 25, 2007.[9]

On July 15, 2007, Kentucky officially raised its speed limits on Interstate and State Parkway Highways to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h). Until that date, Kentucky was the only state along I-65's path that had a speed limit of 65 mph (105 km/h).[10]

In 2008, Governor Steve Beshear ordered the entire route to be widened to a minimum of six lanes through the entire state. This project won an award under the “Under Budget - Medium” category in the Southeast Regional competition of the 2014 America’s Transportation Awards.[11] The project was completed spring of 2019 with the final 10 mile stretch between Sonora and Elizabethtown.

In July 2017, the KYTC opened a new interchange of I-65 at mile marker 30 to provide access to the Kentucky Transpark near Bowling Green. The $66.8 million project, which began in 2016, would improve traffic conditions along I-65 and U.S. 31W in northeastern Warren County. The first phase of the project include the new interchange, Exit 30, plus a four-lane connector road going from the interstate to U.S. 68 just east of Bowling Green.[12] The second phase is building a two-lane connector road running from U.S. 68 to U.S. 31W between Bowling Green and Oakland, thus relieving congestion problems on both U.S. routes. This was the first new exit on I-65 since 2002, when the interchange with KY 234 was built to connect downtown Bowling Green from the freeway.